Sights Unseen
by Operatic Pierrot
Summary: Harry Potter has always seen things that nobody else does — all kinds of strange and fascinating creatures. Even on Privet Drive, the world he grew up in is one of magic... but magic can be dangerous, and Harry's goal of recording all of the world's creatures has its risks. It's totally worth it, though!
1. Chapter 1

Harry Potter had always seen things that nobody else did.

The first time this became important was when he was five and saw a glittering red spider weaving a web of golden-red strands above the stove. He had pointed it out to Aunt Petunia, who scolded him for making up stories — and yet the spider had finished weaving its web while she lectured him, and the stove burst into flames. After the firemen had left, his aunt forced him to repeat what he had told her, mouth set into a worried line.

His odd visions had never been ignored again. When he was six and reported the strange, semi-transparent green worms in the beef Aunt Petunia was preparing for dinner, she had thrown it out on the spot — the news later reported that there was an epidemic of improperly-cleaned meat causing sickness around the country, with a few young children dead. Uncle Vernon, who had complained the loudest about having a salad for dinner, had given Harry a grudging pat on the shoulder and a gruff thanks for protecting Dudley. The very next day he was given his own bedroom, even though Dudley threw a tantrum, and Uncle Vernon scolded his son for the first time. Dudley had been confused, but over the next few weeks he seemed to understand that things had changed — Harry was given normally-sized meals, and Dudley was given chores to share with his cousin.

Dangerous creatures like those were the exceptions rather than the rule, though. Some of them were actually quite pleasant, like the finger-sized naked girls that lived in the garden. They were always happy to take time out of their frolicking to talk to him about the flowers they seemed to live in, about which they were very knowledgeable — under their tutelage, Harry came to love working in the garden and begged that he be allowed to continue even when his chores were reduced. Aunt Petunia had no objections, especially because Harry's tending had somehow turned it into the most beautiful garden on the block.

The enormous spider that had lived in the cupboard under the stairs with him had been frightening when he first saw her, and of course his aunt and uncle hadn't believed she existed, but he had quickly learned that she was a fascinating conversation partner who was only too pleased to take him as a student in the art of weaving. Even after receiving his own room, he paid regular visits to the cupboard in order to catch up with her and show her his latest projects, about which she would inevitably have some form of constructive critique. After his most recent visit she had promised that he was almost ready for her to show him something special, and he couldn't wait.

But most of the things he saw were just in passing and displayed little interest in him, even on the rare occasions that they realized he saw them. The tiny, frog-like creatures that lived in electrical cables were too busy rushing around to talk, and the elephant-eared snake with a head for every phone in the house and a tail stretching into infinity never gave him more than a lazy eyeroll when he tried to draw it into a conversation, though it always did its job and mimicked voices so that he could use the phone like everyone else. When he was out and about there were creatures everywhere, just living their lives — it was fascinating, an entire world that only Harry could see. Even if some of the beings he saw were frightening to look at, like the barbed-wire horses that pulled cars, bleeding oil from every pore of their bodies as they went, they rarely acknowledged his existence. It was easy enough to live normally.

But he was almost nine years old now, practically a grown-up, and had gotten a lot better at vocabulary and writing thanks to the help that the woman whose body was strewn throughout the school library (its Witch, she had called herself) had been giving him. His drawing skills were also better than ever, the result of mentoring from a half-melted man made of paint that he had met in an art supply store. That meant it was time for him to start the Project.

The Project was something he had been dreaming of for years: a catalog of the creatures he saw, with names, pictures, and detailed descriptions of their purposes and traits. That meant he was going to need to start approaching creatures more than ever before, and he knew that was somewhat risky — but as an almost-adult, he was as ready as he'd ever be. The old man who ran the little bookstore Harry had begun frequenting had been only too happy to procure an enormous, blank tome for Harry's use, and the bookstore's Witch (who, unlike the Witch at the school library, could almost be seen in her entirety if you stood in the right place) had taught him an enchantment that he could use so that it would be able to get as big as it needed to be, and it would even update its own index for him, and keep itself alphabetically sorted! It was the biggest piece of magic he had learned, and he loved it.

Oh, that's right, magic was real! The first one to teach him any magic had been the spider in the cupboard, who had shown him how to feel every part of something that he was weaving. The spell gave him a keen awareness of every strand of fabric, as well as anything in contact with it — it was, the spider said, the magic that spiders used to make sure their webs were perfect and detect food once it was caught. Used properly, it could even control the movements of the threads, letting the user weave with nothing but their will. More than once, the awareness granted by the spell had been the only reason a pattern Harry was weaving into a piece of clothing came out perfectly symmetrical. She had also taught him how to secrete colored spider silk from his fingers and hair, and how to narrow and sharpen his nails so that he had no need for needles or scissors. It was the spell for his hair that had allowed him to finally tame it, turning his messy mop of hair into a beautiful, smooth, waist-length curtain of literal silk that he could use as extra sets of limbs due to the thread-control-spell. He frequently took advantage of this to quickly weave large projects or work on several smaller ones at once.

The little girls in the garden had taught him magic, too — how to speak to plants, how to predict the weather, how to understand the whispering of the wind. Thanks to their help, he never left the house without an umbrella on days that it was going to rain, even if the sky looked completely clear. The paint-man at the art store had shown him how to remove individual layers of ink or paint, so that he could always cleanly erase exactly what he needed to, and how to make sure colored paint he was mixing would end up the right hue.

Magic was incredible.

Harry gazed down at the large book on his lap. It was early on a Saturday evening, and Dudley was sleeping over with a friend. His aunt and uncle had decided to have a date night, so they were probably at a movie theater right now. This was a good time to start, because there would be no distractions for hours… but before he began, he needed a name for the Project, something he could use as a title. He thought back to the lessons he'd received from the Witch of the school library, and nodded decisively. He flipped open the cover, grabbed his pen, and wrote in large letters: **Codex of the Real**.

That's what this was, after all. In school, Harry had learned that people thought electricity was a force based on particles, but he could see with his own eyes that it was really those little frog creatures. Batteries were absolutely packed with them! Everywhere that there was electricity, there were those frogs rushing around. People didn't realize that the reason that phones worked was that giant snake — Harry had learned that it didn't just have heads in the Dursley's phones, but in every phone, everywhere! Because people couldn't see how the world really worked, they made up all of these stories about science. Harry was going to write the truth down in this book, even if nobody but his family would believe it! But what creature should he start with? Harry bit his lip. There were so many fascinating things out there, but the first one had to be special.

Well that kind of decided, didn't it? Harry jumped to his feet, smoothed down his skirt, and headed downstairs to the cupboard. It didn't get more special than his very first friend.

* * *

"Good afternoon, little weaver," the spider greeted, her voice a symphony of clicks and hisses.

"Good afternoon, Lady Weaver," he replied with the same not-speech, giving an elegant curtsy, just as the enormous woman made of mannequins that had shown him how to make human clothing had taught him. Harry was reasonably certain that they weren't actually speaking English, but he had never asked — it didn't really matter. "I'm starting the Project." He held up the book in his hand.

"How wonderful," Lady Weaver clicked. "Am I to be cataloged in your book?"

"If you'll let me," Harry said, smiling hopefully. "I wanted you to be the first one I record, since, um…" He ducked his head, blushing. "You were my first friend."

"Of course I'll let you," Lady Weaver declared, a series of clicks that Harry knew were laughter following her words. "I'd imagine you have some questions for me."

"I do, but, um," Harry trailed off, twirling a lock of hair around his finger. "Can I draw you first?"

"I have no objections," Lady Weaver said, tilting her head. "Why must you ask again?"

"Because…" Harry nibbled on his lower lip. "I can't really see you all that well in the cupboard, so you'd need to come out into the light."

"Is that so." Lady Weaver's eight eyes narrowed. "You know I dislike the light, child, but for you…" She sighed, but a moment later she emerged from the cupboard. She seemed to grow larger as she did, changing from the size of a large cat to the size of a horse. For a moment, Harry could only gaze at her in awe — she was gorgeous. What had appeared to be a black carapace in the darkness of the cupboard was made up of a blend of every color he could imagine, causing her to shimmer in the light.

"T-This may take a little while," Harry whispered, mouth dry. "I'm going to need to mix some new colors." He needed to capture that effect in the picture, or this was all worthless. The hue-changing spell that the paint-man had taught him wouldn't be enough on its own — it was a one-and-done effect, designed to blend two colors in specific quantities. But what if he was able to make it remember all of the colors it used and change between them based on the light…?

Harry carefully put a small amount of every color of paint that he had on his palette, then licked his lips, trying to decide how to weave his spell. After a minute, he took a deep breath and began mixing the paint together, eyes shut as he visualized the pattern he hoped he needed. When he finished and opened his eyes again, a soft cheer left his mouth — he had done it. The paint was shimmering, and while it didn't include as many colors as Lady Weaver's body did, he was pretty sure there was no way he'd ever be able to replicate that exact mixture — some of those colors definitely didn't exist as paint. This would have to do.

Lady Weaver peered down at his palette and clicked in disappointment. "You can do better than that, little weaver."

"How?" Harry asked, looking up at her with wide eyes. "I don't have enough colors."

"You only need one 'color' of paint," Lady Weaver admonished. "I didn't teach you to be such a shallow thinker, little weaver."

Harry bit his lip and gazed down at his tubes of paint. Only one color…? He gasped, then used the erasure spell to clean his palette and squirted a glob of black paint onto it. A touch of his finger and spark of magic later, it shimmered with countless beautiful colors. Lady Weaver remained silent as he leapt into action, a sketch quickly appearing on the page, followed by careful painting. An hour later, he was done. He wrote her name, Lady Weaver, beneath the picture with his best calligraphy and turned it around so that she could see it.

"Excellent work, little weaver," Lady Weaver clicked, pride in her voice. She skittered back into the cupboard, her body compressing once more to fit into the small space.

"Thank you," Harry replied, beaming. The portrait was hands-down his best work yet. "Um, can I ask my questions now?"

"Of course," Lady Weaver said, settling her legs under her in an odd pose that had always put Harry in mind of the meditation poses of the small men that emanated from statues of Buddhas that he had seen at some Asian restaurants.

"So… are you really a spider, or…?" Harry asked hesitantly.

Lady Weaver chittered with laughter. "My dear little weaver, I am not _a_ spider. Here in Europe, I am _the_ spider." She leaned forward, eyes glittering. "You may have heard of me in your books, in fact."

Harry's mind raced, trying to think of legendary spiders. "Arachne…?" He whispered. Was it possible? But why would someone like that be in the cupboard, of all places?

"Yes indeed," Lady Weaver declared smugly, returning to her previous stance. "Though I would prefer that you continue to call me 'Lady Weaver.'"

"Then… why are you here…?"

"Now _that_ is a long story, but the short answer is that I'm here because of you," Lady Weaver said, waving a leg. "Your mother made a deal with me for your protection."

"M-My mother?" Harry asked, voice shaking, and he made no move to wipe away his tears. Why hadn't Lady Weaver told him this before? Aunt Petunia had admitted that the car crash had been a lie and his parents had been murdered, had said that they had loved him, but this was the first _proof_ he'd had of that. His mother wouldn't have asked Lady Weaver to protect him if she didn't care, right?

"Yes, your mother," Lady Weaver said. She paused, then reached out to gently cup Harry's chin. "She asked that, if you could see me, I not tell you until you were old enough to understand. After all, the price for my protection was her life."

"Really?" Harry asked, voice shaking. Then his mother really must have loved him dearly, right? Humans valued their lives so much, so to trade hers for his… He felt warm.

"Not in the way you're thinking, silly little weaver," Lady Weaver murmured, a chittering laugh escaping her. "Your mother had her own great project, a spell that would have been able to provide a defense against a certain death curse. However…" Four of Lady Weaver's eight eyes slipped shut. "She had a glimpse of the future after her death if she saved you in that manner, and learned that your life would not be a happy one. So she entreated with me to save your life and ensure you would not be abused by her sister's family — and in exchange, I devoured the knowledge of her life's work."

"I see," Harry muttered, tears still leaking from his eyes. "Could you have saved both of us?"

"She did not ask me to, and it was not my concern," Lady Weaver said, shrugging her eight pairs of shoulders. "This is the most important lesson you will learn from interviewing me, little weaver: Grand Spirits such as I are not human, even if some of us may take that form. There is a limit to the direct assistance we may provide without an equal trade, lest we unbalance the world — and mortal lives pass us by in the blink of an eye. What reason did I have to care for some human girl I'd never met before?"

Harry understood. That was how the world worked, how all of the other creatures he'd met though — though he doubted any of the others he knew were Grand Spirits. They lacked the gravitas of Lady Weaver. And yet…

Lady Weaver was his first friend. He had thought she was a little different, that she cared more than the rest. If she could so easily dismiss his mother, did she really care about him, or was he just a job to her? He wouldn't blame her if that were the case — it would be silly to try to deny her nature, but all the same… what payment was she planning to ask for her lessons in weaving?

"Oh, little weaver," Lady Weaver whispered, voice sad. She pulled him into an eight-legged hug, and he wrapped his arms around her without hesitation. "I have watched you grow for eight years. I have taught you my art." She sighed, and he felt her body shake against him. "You are like a child to me, little weaver. Please, never doubt that I love you."

And now Harry was bawling openly, his hair stretching out to hug Lady Weaver all the more tightly with six extra rope-like limbs. For as far back as his memory stretched, nobody had said those words to him. Perhaps his mother had, but he was too young to remember it. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon tolerated him, maybe even kind of liked him on their better days, and Dudley didn't mind sharing games with him sometimes, but he knew they didn't love him.

Lady Weaver did. She wasn't human, and she was no different from the other creatures in her lack of care for humans. He didn't think she'd care if the entirety of Privet Drive burned to the ground, killing every family that lived there… though in truth, neither would he.

But she loved him. And that was enough.

 **AN:**

 **So this was an idea that hit me when I was chatting with some friends, and I banged out a couple of chapters that I'll post over the next few days, after which I have no idea what kind of update schedule it will have, so sorry about that! I do want to keep going with it, though, so chapters will show up whenever they managed to coalesce out of the ether** **… and no, this isn't part of the same AU as Tigers and Pizza, sorry! I do have another little piece for that almost ready for release, though.**

 **This Harry has been more-or-less entirely raised and taught by a variety of non-human creatures, many of which have mentalities that are far from human. As a result, he'll tend to come off as a little odd even to people in the magical world, but he gets results. His set of taboos and understanding of 'common sense' is completely different from a normal human's, in ways that can be both helpful and problematic…**

 **One thing I've had a lot of fun with here is the variety of creatures that keep day-to-day life running. Science is, of course, an explanation for how things works that goes into all of the nitty-gritty details and is seen by many scientists as a replacement for mythological explanations, and I wanted to try writing about a world where those scientific explanations aren't quite getting it right. Science-based ideas work, of course, but… not for the reasons people think! Mind, magical people as a whole are just as off-base with their own explanations. The ability to see these creatures is quite rare!**

 **Anyway, hope you enjoyed it!**


	2. Chapter 2

After he finished crying, Harry had peppered Lady Weaver with questions. She had told him more about the Grand Spirits, ancient beings like herself with enormous powers that occasionally treated with humans, and he had resolved to be as polite as he could if he ever met another and to be very, very careful not to accidentally make a deal — Grand Spirits weren't nice. They weren't nice at all… and saying their true names drew their attention to you, no matter where they were. The idea was terrifying.

Some, though, like Lady Weaver, were at least not _cruel_. They dealt fairly, not seeking to twist the terms of their bargains, and could be counted on not to attempt to trick a human into some kind of contract. They didn't engage in petty cruelties for their own amusement. As such, Harry had confidently added "Human Friendliness Level: Moderate" to Lady Weaver's page, before including a brief biography of Arachne as told in her own words. Before he had left, Lady Weaver promised that she would show him the next step in her art tomorrow. There had been an extra spring in his step as he headed out to the garden to talk to the girls.

"Hello, everyone!" Harry chirped.

"Oh, it's the little human!"

"Hi, little human!"

"Little human! Yay!"

Harry was immediately swarmed. Even he wasn't sure how many of the girls lived in the garden — they seemed to multiply whenever he wasn't looking. He laughed as he received dozens of tiny hugs.

"I started the Project!" Harry declared, holding up his book.

"Project?"

"What project?"

"Is it about food? I'm hungry."

"The little human is talking about his cat-a-log, idiot!"

Harry recognized the final speaker, and was unable to hold in a snort of laughter as she slapped the hungry one upside the head. Most of them seemed to have very short memories, but this one never seemed to forget anything and had fashioned herself little fake, lensless glasses out of a twig about a year ago. Like all of the others, she had no name, but she seemed to be as close to a leader as they had.

"The cats are that way," the glasses-wearing girl continued, pointing down the street towards Mrs. Figg's house. "I haven't seen any come by today. I'm not sure where you can get a log, but I assume you have that under control."

Harry covered his mouth to try to hold in his giggles, but failed. "A catalog is a book that has information in it," he explained. "I want to draw you and write about you."

"Really?"

"You want to draw us?"

"Me! Me! Draw me!"

"No, draw me!"

"Draw us together!"

"I'll draw all of you if you pose as a group," Harry offered. "I don't think I have time to draw you all separately." He was planning to cover the girls as a single classification, after all — the catalog would include individual entries for unique beings like Lady Weaver, but it wasn't meant to cover every individual member of each species that he met.

It took almost half an hour to get all of the girls who were interested in being drawn to gather together and remain mostly still. It was definitely an interesting portrait — by the time he was done, he had needed to depict six separate fistfights, four pairs and three quintets who couldn't keep their hands or mouths to themselves, nine girls giving bunny ears or moose antlers to each other, and nearly three dozen different kinds of silly expressions. It was exhausting, but it was also a lot of fun — there was never a dull moment when Harry was spending time with the girls in the garden, even if their pranks could get a little dangerous sometimes. One thing that definitely had to go into their entry was that you should never, ever try pranking them back — they'd take it as a challenge and escalate, and Harry had only survived his foolishness due to the intervention of a sympathetic tree spirit.

"Do you call yourselves anything?" Harry asked, shaking his wrist to try to ease the stiffness that had set in after so much work. The question was met with dozens of questioning looks.

"Call ourselves anything?"

"What does that mean?"

"You mean names? Like humans do?"

"No, I mean, like… like how I'm a 'human'," Harry corrected.

The girls began muttering to each other in confusion, and the one wearing 'glasses' floated forward.

"Why would we do something silly like that?" she asked. "You humans are the ones obsessed with names. We're just us!"

"Would you mind if I made something up for my book?" Harry asked hopefully. "I can't really leave your section untitled…"

The muttering became more heated, and Harry saw several frowns being directed his way.

"If you really have to, I guess it's okay," the glasses-wearing girl grumbled. "But it had better not be something mean!"

"I was thinking of just calling you 'garden fairies,'" Harry admitted. It wasn't very imaginative, but he thought it fit.

"Garden fairies…" the glasses-wearing 'fairy' mumbled. She turned to look back at the others.

"I like it!"

"I don't."

"This is stuuupid. Can I go sleep?"

"It's okay I guess."

"Do any of us actually care?"

"You can use it," the glasses-wearer finally decided, "as long as you don't say we use it."

"I can do that," Harry agreed, making a note of it in the book. "Is there anything you want me to say about you?"

"No," she snapped, folding her arms. A number of the others copied her. "Just write what you want." She turned up her nose and spun around, disappearing into the foliage. A moment later, the garden looked empty.

Harry sighed. He had forgotten just how much it irritated the garden fairies to be involved in anything they thought of as 'book learning,' but in his defense the Botany Guide Incident had happened almost two and a half years ago now. They'd forget about it and forgive him by tomorrow, though. He jotted down as many notes as he could think of, then looked up at the sky to judge the time. He probably didn't have enough time today to go talk to anything that lived away from Privet Drive, but…

Harry rose to his feet and brushed dirt off of himself. There was that creature in the alley down the block that he'd wanted to investigate for some time now, but he had always been a little too scared. That wasn't an acceptable excuse now that he had started the Project, though. If it was dangerous, it was all the more important that he record it.

He set off down the street, a determined look on his face. It was time to find out what lurked in the darkness.

* * *

Harry swallowed and clutched his book closer to his chest as he slowly stepped into the alley. The shadows were darker than the level of light suggested they should be, and they seemed to twist whenever they were in the corner of his vision.

"It's just an alley," Harry whispered to himself. "Nothing to be scared of." He tried to ignore the way that it had come out as more of a question than a statement.

The sound of movement startled him, and he jumped back — but it was just a rat scavenging in some of the garbage that had overflowed from a rubbish bin. It glared up at him with its beady eyes when it noticed that he was looking, and he quickly averted his gaze and tried to calm down his rapidly-beating heart. If only Aunt Petunia hadn't told so many stories about alleys being full of muggers and kidnappers…

Harry took one hesitant step forward, then another. The shadows pressed in around him, and he heard more movement, but resolutely ignored it. He recognized the sound now as nothing but the scurrying of rats, and as long as he didn't bother them they would leave him alone.

And that, of course, was when he tripped over a loose stone and found himself on the ground, face to face with a rat larger than he had ever imagined possible. He wasn't able to hold in a scream, though he choked it off as quickly as he could. The rat snarled, and Harry scrambled back…

…into a wall of blackness.

* * *

 **EXCERPTS FROM THE CODEX OF THE REAL, 6th EDITION**

 _ **LADY WEAVER**_

Human Friendliness Level: Moderate

Threat Level: High

Abilities: Weaving

Countermeasures: Politeness, strong sunlight, owls

Lady Weaver is the use-name of the Grand Spirit Arachne, First of Spiders within modern Europe. She is generally of a kind disposition, but she loathes the jealous and will quickly grow wrathful if she lingers until the light of the sun. She is capable of fantastic feats of weaving, including the creation of magical garments that can provide the wearer with powerful blessings, and can be called upon to defend against a foe that seeks to destroy you for unjust reasons — but only at great cost.

When treating with Lady Weaver, it is imperative that one displays a high level of respect and acts with utmost decorum. She will not allow slights to go unpunished, and while she may be successfully appeased if a transgression was truly accidental it will still color her perception of the one petitioning her aid. She prefers to deal with those who possess a strong dedication to some form of art, even if their actual level of ability is low. A hard worker will find her a pleasant companion, but the indolent will soon learn to fear her biting wit.

She was born…

 _ **GARDEN FAIRIES**_

Human Friendliness Level: Moderate

Threat Level: Low to Extremely High (based on numbers and disposition)

Abilities: Manipulation of Nature

Countermeasures: Politeness, rings of salt

Garden Fairies (a name given to them for the purposes of this text, as they have no name for themselves) are amongst the most common Unseen Creatures. They dwell in every flowering plant, from the smallest to the largest, as well as in shallow bodies of fresh water. Garden Fairies possess an instinctive connection to the magic of nature that allows them to pull off magical feats far beyond what their small size suggests, and if enough of them gather together even a Grand Spirit should be wary.

They delight in mischief, happily playing 'pranks' that range from the theft of clothing to filling your nose and throat with water as you sleep. In large numbers, they have been known to throw the unwary forward or backward in time. If you find yourself being pranked by Garden Fairies, it is critical that you not react with anger or, worse, with an attempt to prank them back — they will see such responses as a challenge and escalate their 'pranks,' something that will almost certainly end in your death. They hold no malice in their hearts — indeed, they seem incapable of feeling that particular emotion — but also place no value on life, as death seems to have little hold over them. The author witnessed a Garden Fairy die in a fire started by an accident during a barbecue, but the same fairy was alive and well the next day.

Curiously, they cannot cross lines of salt, so if one finds themselves beset it is possible to ward them off by hiding within a salt circle. Their short attention spans will ensure that they will soon lose interest and wander away, unless their target has done something to truly rouse their wrath. They may be trapped within such circles, but this is something that only the very foolish would attempt — while normally cheerful, they loathe restriction. A Garden Fairy trapped in such a way will bear an undying hatred for the one who trapped her, and any Garden Fairies who learn of her imprisonment will feel themselves obligated to destroy the jailer and find a way to free their companion.

Their ecology is curious, as they appear to be an all-female species…

* * *

 **AN:**

 **I meant to have this up two days ago, but I ended up without internet for a couple of days, ugh. That seems to be over now, though, so I'll be tossing up the next chapter tomorrow!**

 **From here on out, there will be some Codex excerpts at the end of chapters where they're relevant. They'll generally be from later revisions of the Codex, because I don't think there's any way I could possibly mimic the way a nine-year-old would write something like that!**


	3. Chapter 3

It was dark. Everything was too dark. Harry couldn't see or hear anything, and knew he was starting to hyperventilate, but knowing what was happening wasn't enough to let him stop.

Something warm, furry, and _slimy_ brushed against Harry's leg. He screamed, but no sound reached his ears.

Light. He needed light. Harry wracked his brain, trying to think of any magic that could help him. The only thing that came to mind was a trick he'd seen from the tiny-headed birds that perched on streetlights — he'd never spoken to one, if they could speak at all, and so he had no idea how they did it, but it caused their feathers to shine in the darkness. Could he do something similar with his hair?

Harry tried to imagine the pattern of magic he'd need to weave to accomplish something like that, shivering as yet another _thing_ rubbed against his leg. His first thought had been rats, but rats didn't have that many legs. The pattern he wove was rough and used the color-changing spell he knew as a baseline, and he was certain that the birds' magic was much more elegant, but his hair began to glow a soft violet hue. His moment of triumph was cut short when he saw what had been touching him.

They were rats after all, but not like any rats he'd ever seen before. They were scabrous, with massive wounds in their flesh that suggested they should be dead, and they had no eyes, only empty sockets. The number of legs they had ranged from one to twelve, and their fangs looked like metal knives. When he had created the light, every single rat's sightless gaze had snapped to focus on him.

Harry froze. He couldn't let the light go out now — they knew where he was, and that would prevent him from being able to see them — but the radiance didn't seem to be going as far as it should, and everything beyond a few feet from him was still pitch-black. The rats began slowly moving towards him, their footsteps now audible. He backed away, but quickly found himself pressed up against a wall. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to think of something, anything that could get him out of this mess.

He heard a loud hiss, but it didn't sound like a rat noise. In fact, it almost sounded like… A squeal of pain met his ears, and he opened his eyes. The sight before him had him almost laughing in relief — of all the things that could have saved him, he hadn't expected Mrs. Figg's cats. They didn't seem to be interested in eating the horrifying rats, just killing them, and for every rat that died the oppressive darkness seemed to grow weaker. The light from Harry's hair illuminated the ground further and further away. The cats were merciless, refusing to let even a single rat escape, and before long the alley seemed to contain nothing but the ordinary shadows of the evening.

Harry found himself the recipient of the cats' full attention now, and they rubbed against his legs, clearly desiring to be praised for their heroics. He laughed as he knelt down and gave them a thorough petting. He wasn't sure what exactly would have happened to him if the cats hadn't shown up, but his gut told him that it wouldn't have been as simple as dying. He cast his gaze around the ground, but the corpses of the rats seemed to have vanished along with the darkness.

"What were those…?" Harry whispered, not expecting any kind of an answer.

He didn't get one, so that was probably for the best.

* * *

Harry had hurried straight home after that, not wanting to see if any more of the horrific things were going to crawl out of the shadows. The image of their distorted shapes was burned into the back of his eyelids, and he had no trouble drawing a tangle of the creatures for their currently-untitled article. He hoped he would never encounter them again, but suspected he might not be so lucky if he was really dedicated to exploring everywhere to find as many creatures as he could. At least he had learned that they were afraid of cats — that was something he could make use of in the future.

The first day of the Project had ended up being rather more exciting than Harry had planned, and had highlighted a significant problem with his skillset — if he found himself in danger, there really wasn't much of anything that he could do. It was incredibly unlikely that those rat-things would be the only hostile creatures he would encounter, so he needed to fix that. The first step would be to get better at escaping — if he could avoid a fight, that was the best possible outcome. And when he thought about magic for escaping…

A goofy grin spread across Harry's face. He'd always wanted to be able to teleport, and now he had a good reason to figure it out. He even had a target to study, right there in the house. He grabbed every pair of socks he owned and hurried to the laundry room. He put them into the washing machine and started a cycle, then hid in a pile of towels, eyes fixed on the washing machine.

He didn't have to wait long. A small, elephant-like creature popped into existence a couple of minutes later and furtively looked around. It didn't notice Harry due to his clever camouflage, so it reached out with its trunk. Somehow, the trunk phased through the glass on the front of the washing machine and grabbed a sock, then quickly retreated and tossed it into the creature's mouth.

Harry focused all of his attention on the little elephant, doing his best to use the magical senses Lady Weaver had been instilling in him to sense the patterns of the magic it used to distort space. He couldn't quite grasp the whole thing, despite his best efforts, but it reminded him a lot of the sensations he felt near the tail of the snake that let the phones work. If he had a little more time, he might have been able to figure it all out, but the unfortunate fact was that eaters of socks had very small stomachs. They always ate an odd number of socks, but it was very rare that they ate more than three. In this case, the creature disappeared after it had finished swallowing its third sock.

Harry frowned. The pattern he had sensed was odd, and seemed to overlap itself in many places. He turned it over in his mind as he walked to the closest phone — the one in the hall — and stared at the snake's tail. He had been right — the pattern was very similar, but while the eater of socks' teleportation pattern overlapped itself, the snake's instead seemed to have no proper edges. The center of the pattern, though, seemed to be almost identical.

Harry nibbled on his lower lip. It probably wouldn't be safe to test this kind of magic on himself the first time. He needed something small, something that he wouldn't miss if he lost it and that wouldn't be dangerous if it appeared somewhere he didn't want it going. An idea struck him and he ran up to his room — Aunt Petunia had purchased a pack of erasers when she had learned he was drawing, and while he had used them a lot at the beginning, he hadn't really needed them since he learned the erasure spell. He picked one up and stared at it. He wanted it to be somewhere other than the palm of his hand, like… he cast his gaze across the room. His bed, that was a good target. He wove the pattern, trying to tie the space together.

The eraser vanished, but appeared in midair less than halfway to the bed and fell to the ground.

Harry grinned. It was a start.

* * *

 **EXCERPTS FROM THE CODEX OF THE REAL, 6th EDITION**

 _ **LURKING TERRORS**_

Human Friendliness Level: Extremely Low

Threat Level: Moderate to Extremely High (based on environment)

Abilities: Sensing fear, darkness generation

Countermeasures: Cats, incredibly bright lights

Lurking Terrors bear a vague resemblance to rats, but they should not (and cannot, once seen) be confused for ordinary creatures, even heavily diseased ones. They possess no eyes and variable limb counts — the author has seen Lurking Terrors that have only a single leg, with which they slowly drag themselves towards their prey, and others with over a dozen. Their bodies are inevitably a patchwork of oozing wounds.

The bite of a Lurking Terror induces uncontrollable fear far beyond that provoked by their horrific appearances, and due to the metal that makes up their fangs they can easily tear chunks of flesh from their victims. Even if one survives the encounter, a bite will quickly grow diseased with a rot that will spread outwards until it claims the life of the victim. The only ways to stop the rot are to amputate every part of the body to which it has spread or to submerge the affected flesh in a mixture of unpolluted seawater and unprocessed honey.

Lurking Terrors are born from the shadows in places that inspire fear. Even neighborhood rumors about the dangers of a particular alley are enough to spawn a small nest, while a largely unexplored forest where people are known to have vanished may contain a seething horde of the creatures. They are violent by nature, seeing all living things as prey — save for cats, from which they will flee to the best of their ability unless they have a truly enormous number of companions. In turn, cats have a natural animosity towards Lurking Terrors that leads them to wipe them out whenever they meet. Lights of significant strength, like a focused spotlight, can be used to drive them away — but the more Lurking Terrors are present, the more their darkness will eat away at the light and the more powerful the light will need to be to do anything more than draw their ire.

It is possible to recognize the presence of Lurking Terrors by the unnatural level of darkness they generate…

 _ **EATERS OF SOCKS**_

Human Friendliness Level: Low

Threat Level: Very Low (mostly an annoyance)

Abilities: Teleportation, matter phasing

Countermeasures: Watching the room in which laundry is being done, washing an odd number of socks

Eaters of Socks are peculiar, elephant-like creatures. They are rarely more than two feet tall, but their trunks may be up to twice this length. They come in a wide variety of pastel colors, and have bulbous eyes that take up most of their faces.

Their diet consists entirely of socks, and only of socks that are actively being washed or dried. They will appear only if nobody is present in the laundry room and only if an even number of socks is present, and they will consume an odd number of socks. If you are unlucky enough to be regularly visited by Eaters of Socks, you may find yourself forced to buy an enormous number of new socks.

Fortunately, they are timid creatures. The mere sight of a human or large pet (such as a cat or a dog) will cause them to flee, and they will not attempt to consume socks if an odd number is already present. While an annoyance, Eaters of Socks are ultimately harmless and are far more scared of you than you could ever possibly be of them.


End file.
